Cryptic cover art

When I first saw this I thought it was kind of cheap looking. Now if I look hard enough (a practice I have engaged in many times and that I am quite fond of) it is asthough there's something looking back at me. But maybe you didn't have to look too hard to notice

Being chemically unassisted at the moment, I can see what appear to be two faces in the image. One is on the upper-right side and is covered by a an early Roman-style helmet witha nose guard. The other is the face of a woman, with the top of her head covered by the "R". Her hair is long and drapes over her shoulders.

If you are seeing something else, it's not there for me, so may be a matter of chemical assistance. Certainly not knocking chemical assistance. I remember staring for a long, long time at the covers of Left Hand Path and In The Nightside Eclipse after taking shrooms and finding much more detail and meaning than I ever noticed before. Around the same time i also decided that Wolves in the Throne Room had one the most intense logos I'd ever seen.

This cover I was just studying on the cassette version last week. Originally it was a blob and a face, then with the tape 3 faces, now i see possibly 5 or more layered faces- maybe the 'Demon Advance'- not to mention all the screaming things in the trees, but those are everywhere you look in any tree. Yes I'm almost constantly chemically assisted but they are still there when I'm not. Fantastic fucking album!

I remember one time I was listening to some miscellaneous mix of Burzum and Incantation while working out. I went a good 45 minutes before taking a rest. I lay on my back in the middle of my floor, staring at the ceiling as Onward to Golgotha started its first track. The feeling was like being in a trance. The pulse of my heart was the only restriction on the speed of my thoughts. Of course the music took on a very direct and smothering presence. I was, for all intents and purposes, glued to the floor for the next 20 minutes.

I've listened to a lot of music on a lot of drugs before, and nothing approaches the intensity of that experience.